The Source and Legitimacy of Perceived Risk

在过去的十年里，研究人员已经开始研究公众如何直观地感知危险技术的风险。对风险认知的研究如今被风险管理者广泛引用，并在有关风险政策的公开讨论中发挥着积极作用。然而，由于风险感知方法缺乏正式的评价结构，人们往往不清楚公众的投入应如何纳入风险技术的评价，或公众关切的权重应如何作为有关技术选择的政策决策的一部分。拟议研究的总体目标是促进将风险认知与风险评估方法结合起来，作为社会风险管理政策的一部分。这项研究的具体目标是探索(A)心理测量风险测量、技术的物理特征和社会学关切之间的联系，以及(B)风险感知关切作为风险评估贡献者的合法性。这项研究将通过深入研究一个关键的风险特征--恐惧，并通过测试一种调查社会风险关切的政策适当性的方法，来更好地理解感知风险的来源和合法性。

In the past decade researchers have begun to study how the public intuitively perceives the risks of hazardous technologies. Studies of risk perception are today widely cited by risk managers and play an active role in public discussions concerning risk policies. However, because risk perception methodology lacks a formal evaluative structure, it is often not clear how public input should be incorporated into evaluations of risky technologies or how public concerns should be weighted as part of policy decisions regarding choices among technologies. The general objective of the proposed research is to facilitate the integration of risk perception with risk evaluation approaches as part of social risk-management policies. The specific objective of the research is to explore (a) the connections between psychometric risk measures, the physical features of a technology, and sociological concerns, and (b) the legitimacy of risk-perception concerns as contributors to risk evaluations. The research will develop a better understanding of the sources and legitimacy of perceived risk by examining in-depth one key risk characteristic, dread and by testing a methodology for investigating the policy appropriateness of social concerns of risk.